Successful marriage consistently calls for both the humble admission of error when wrongdoing has occurred and the mutual commitment to grow in unfamiliar ways. Nothing destroys these two pillars of healthy relationships more quickly than persistent defensiveness and an unforgiving, critical spirit. These are the heart-hardening factors that eventually destroy the elasticity of creative conflict resolution. More than anything, they pave the way for bitter relationships, ones in which long-held grudges are the norm.
Nora, a client of mine, was describing in great detail one day an apparently thoughtless act of her husband. She described it with such vehemence and in such vivid detail that I thought that the event had occurred only recently. But, when I asked her how long ago this had happened, she said “about 20 years”! Yet, she was still literally seething over it, never missing an opportunity to remind her husband of his once dreadful behavior.
There are Two Sides to Most Stories
Investigating destructive grudges like this one usually reveals two sides to the story, one detailing the damage done to the “unforgiver” and the other describing the damage done to the “unforgiven.” In the case of the one who cannot forgive, damage results from both the injury of the original insult and the resentment he or she refuses to release because of it.
Sometimes, it’s difficult for them to forgive because of the failure of the guilty spouse to demonstrate appropriate sorrow for the offending behavior. They fail to understand that forgiveness is as much, if not more, a healing mechanism for the victim as it is for the culprit. Nora, for example, had suffered deep bitterness about her husband’s early behavior and it had ended up affecting her health as well as her relationships with other members of her family. In fact, her adult daughter had only recently commented to her, “Mom, why are you so difficult to get close to…you always seem to be angry about something.” It was that comment, more than anything else, that finally prompted her to seek help.
Refusing to Let Go
Sometimes, people will simply refuse to let go of any mistake or misdeed regardless of how penitent the other spouse is. They may have come from a relentlessly critical home, or, perhaps, they have become mired in a victim mindset that requires an identified scapegoat to blame for their chronic unhappiness. Either way, they remain aggrieved because they believe that, “on principle”, the offender should not be taken off the hook.
It’s this anger-distorted view of accountability that leaves them perpetually resentful. They fail to see that forgiving someone is not diminishing the wrongness of the act; nor is it somehow covering up the sin (by ignoring or dismissing its importance). It certainly doesn’t mean that you are opting to become a doormat. Indeed, it has little to do with accountability at all. For sin will always be sin before God.
Instead, forgiveness essentially says,
Just as God has forgiven me of my sin against Him, so, too, will I forgive you of your sin against me. Even though you have wronged me, I will not hold that sin against you.”
Far from a passive response, forgiveness is, in reality, the most assertive behavior you can display in the situation.
For the offending partner who has been refused forgiveness, the damage to the relationship comes from a different source: It starts with his or her defensiveness in response to being confronted. When taking responsibility for your own sin has become unacceptable, especially where your spouse is concerned, there is little opportunity for healing. Things can therefore only go from bad to worse when the resentment for being perpetually in the dog house is piled on top of everything else.
By defensiveness, I mean a failure to be adequately sorry for what you did, making excuses for your disrespectful behavior, and generally resisting the need for change. When you become defensive, you are more concerned about shielding yourself from guilt than correcting your mistakes. With such egocentrism, it’s always easier to claim innocence than to accept culpability. But then the relationship becomes more about your victimhood than about the emotional pain in the other person, more about your sensitivities than about those of your spouse. Still worse, constant arguments about who is at fault tend to spawn even more hurtful behavior, which, sadly, erodes basic trust in the relationship.
The Healing Process
It is important to understand that, in the healing process, there is a difference between trust and forgiveness. Forgiveness is an act of grace, but trust is the result of experience. While forgiveness involves a conscious decision, trust involves a change in perception. That’s why trust is gained slowly over time, but is lost quickly with negative events. As a consequence, you can forgive someone and yet, for some time, not trust that person, at least not until you are convinced that the change is lasting.
The only alternative to forgiveness is a grudge. But the irony of bitterness is that you give away your own power: you give the person who wronged you the power to arouse a near constant state of anger and resentment in you. In essence, you’ve given away your freedom to respond in a healthy and flexible way. The rigidity that follows, then, becomes your imprisonment of unhappiness. Is that really what you want for your marriage?
Our experience with God is all about liberty. Jesus Himself proclaimed that “…the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). Why is it, then, that we insist on imprisoning ourselves with lies? Why not let our faith provide the blueprint for a lasting, fulfilling marriage? If we do, we’ll find that grudges have no part in it.
